On February 24, according to Bloomberg, the stock price of “Big Blue” IBM hit its largest one-day decline in more than 25 years on Monday. Previously, AI startup Anthropic said its Claude Code programming tool could help modernize COBOL, an old programming language that runs on IBM computers.
IBM
IBM shares plunged 13% on Monday, their biggest one-day percentage drop since October 2000. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the decline brought IBM's stock price to a cumulative decline of 27% in February, which is expected to record the largest single-month decline since at least 1968.
Anthropic wrote in a blog post: "In the past, modernizing a COBOL system required a large team of consultants to spend years sorting out the workflow. Tools like Claude Code can automate the most labor-intensive exploration and analysis phases of the Cobol modernization process."
Most mainframe computers running COBOL are manufactured by IBM. The plummeting stock price makes IBM the latest company to come under tremendous pressure due to market concerns that AI will drag down the growth prospects of traditional enterprises.